Author: doug

A story ended by the fire

11 June 2016: This afternoon, walking a slightly different route than normal, I spotted a pine tree starting over — lots of trees were lost to fire several years ago. You have to wonder how much of the existing root system feeds this. Or did it sprout from seed in the rotting trunk? I’ll have to look more closely.

5 May 2017: Pine trees don’t regrow from stumps, unlike eucalyptus trees. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at this. Apparently a pine cone sprouted inside the rotting stump. How it fares as the stump continues to rot will be interesting to watch!

3-½ years later, our hopes of seeing the root structure ended. The rotting host stump burned, consuming the roots of the young tree, now four meters tall.

The fire

The dogs were understandably confused yesterday when they encountered something never before seen on the dog walk.

By the end of the walk, we looked back and saw that the brush fire had reached the trees. We were not at all sure we’d have any trees remaining the next morning.

But somehow the fire died down, leaving charred trunks and smoldering stumps today.

The “Boo!” bear stump had already degraded seriously since my photo of it almost three years ago. Not much left of it now.

Some stumps were still aflame. This one has burned underground (note the crater)

Other stumps burned completely, above and below ground, leaving holes.

And strangely, many of the paths we followed were untouched.

Here’s a sapling that was burned in half, but note that the very flammable pine needles nearby were untouched. All in all, very few trees were destroyed.

image

An ant colony revealed to have been built around branches of a bush.

Overall, a quite surreal experience.

Robins like paltas

In previous years, we thought it was a comedreja (possum) eating our avocados. Nope – this year it’s birds. As you can see they’re doing a fine job. I must say, though, unlike some other birds, they are very thorough. Nothing goes to waste.

So I guess if the birds are happy, I am as well.